f clay from which it had been evolved.

Blizzard's eyes had undergone a most thorough schooling. They had
learned, to the flicker of an eyelid, when Barbara was going to look
their way, and at such times were careful not to meet her eyes. When,
however, they knew her to be intent for a period upon the work and not
the model, they studied her always with zest, and always with more and
more understanding.

Suddenly, one day, after he had been sitting motionless for half an
hour, the beggar broke his pose.

"Please don't," she said. "I'm not through."

In his eyes, soft and full of understanding, there was a gentle, if
masterful, smiling. "Yes, you are," he said, "for now. I haven't watched
you at work all these mornings without learning something about the way
you go at it. Do you know what a blind alley is?"

"Yes," she said petulantly, "and I'm in one."

"Quite so," said Blizzard. "And you're not taking the right way out.
First you tried to climb up the house on the right, then the house on
the left, and when I interrupted you, you were making a sixth effort to
shin up the lightning-rod of the house that blocks the alley."

Barbara laughed. "But," she objected, "I've got to get out somehow--or
fake--or call the thing a fiasco, and give it up."

"Of course you've got to get out," said Blizzard, "and it's very
simple."

"Simple!" she exclaimed; "a lot you know about it."

"Quite simple," he repeated; "you merely face about and walk out. In,
other words, remove that lump of mud which one day is going to be more
like my ear than my ear itself, and begin over."

And it came home to Barbara that the man was right. "Thank you," she
said simply. "You're a great help. That is precisely what I shall do."

"But don't do it now."

"Why not?"

"Because you've wasted the freshness of your early-morning zeal with
vain efforts. Destroy what you've done--there's always satisfaction in
that; but either leave the re-doing alone for to-day, or try
something else."

"When," said Barbara, beginning to feel soothed and confident again,
"did I put myself in your hands for guidance?"

"The moment you lost your presence of mind," said the beggar; "that's
when a woman always puts herself in a man's hands. Put a cloth over his
satanic majesty's portrait, and sit down and relax your muscles, and
talk to the devil himself."

Barbara did as he commanded with the expression of a biddable child. She
flung herself into a deep chair